


Wrap the Night Around Me

by DirtyBrian



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Character Death, F/M, I should be sorry but alas I AM NOT
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-25
Updated: 2017-01-25
Packaged: 2018-09-19 19:27:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9457253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DirtyBrian/pseuds/DirtyBrian
Summary: After Journey's End, the Doctor begins to see Rose in his dreams.





	

He dreams of her.

The first night, he literally collapses in the jump seat, too exhausted to contemplate staggering to his bedroom.

It’s not much- a flash of blonde hair and a blue leather jacket. They’re standing on a beach (that damned beach) and she’s crying.

Distantly, he realizes that he’s the reason there are tears streaming down her cheeks, and it’s interesting- he didn’t think his hearts could break any further.

It doesn’t take long for him to figure out that he’s seeing through his counterpart’s eyes. He doesn’t know if it’s a distant telepathic link, or if his unconscious is desperately trying to apply a balm to his tattered psyche.

Either option is both exquisite and tortuous.

(But he gets to see Rose again, so does it matter?)

The dreams each night grow longer and more detailed. Her hand in his, soft words and eventual declarations of love, and a brand new world teeming with possibility.

She smiles often, he’s pleased to note. The tongue-touched smile that has always left him breathless. A slow, sleepy smile when she wakes from an impromptu nap against his chest. The sly, seductive smile only moments before she drags him against her for a snog.

He catalogues and organizes these smiles, the moments that are so uniquely her. Most days, the only thing that keeps him going is the prospect of seeing her in his dreams.

Rose would laugh at him now, at how much he sleeps. But she might understand, might smile sympathetically when she realizes it’s only to get back to her.

They’re married one night. She’s stunning in white, and her smile is so brilliant. They laugh and dance and he loses himself, swept up in the raw joy she exudes.

He wakes with an ache in his chest. The bliss in her eyes haunts him for days.

They spend a lifetime together, the Doctor and Rose- birthdays, anniversaries, adventures and danger. There are arguments and laughter and tears and he drinks them in and clings to them like his life depends on it.

He’s with her when her eyes close for the last time.

There is no sense of time in this dreamscape that he’s in. What translates to several weeks in his universe has been a lifetime in hers, and try as he might, the Doctor can’t save Rose from the inevitable.

It doesn’t stop him from begging until he’s hoarse and weeping against her shoulder. She cries too, and the tears she sheds remind him of that first night on the beach.

(It hurts, oh God it hurts.)

(But what can you do from a universe away?)

When she breathes her last, he is cradling her against his chest.

All too soon, he feels consciousness gnawing at him. He fights it, desperate to stay with Rose, to fulfill his vow that she would never be alone.

\--

Three weeks and a lifetime after he first sees her, the Doctor awakens, tears on his cheek and a scream caught in his throat.

After Rose, he loses his sensibility. He pushes the TARDIS beyond her limits, pushes  _ himself _ beyond his.

He breaks the laws of time, because now ‘ _ what would Rose think?’ _ is no longer a compelling warning.

He nearly breaks himself, because there’s nothing left to fight for.

It isn’t until after Mars, after the trauma and the terror and the death that he realizes what he’s doing and who he’s hurting, and suddenly ‘ _ what would Rose think?’ _ drives him to his knees.

The last night, he literally collapses on the jumpseat, too heartsick to contemplate staggering to his bedroom.

He doesn’t dream of her again.

 


End file.
